E.S.L. Protester Official Web Site
Nova Page 2
NOVA: THE FACTS
Author: Murdo Brown
Ok I read many Internet comments on Nova and I feel that both negative and positive results seem to be lacking in balance and detail. The negative reports are often little better than a rant, while the positive reports tend to be either:
(A) slavish devotion that was likely written by doe eyed fresher or NOVA zealot
AT’s, HT’s or AAM’s; or
(B) a highly suspect and absurd critique of the right of others to criticize NOVA
epitomized by the lines “well if you don’t like it, leave”. This stupid retort is so
circular and self-defeating that you should pay it no attention because of its
sheer crass stupidity.
I shall separate my information on NOVA into two sections: THE FACTS and then MY OPINION/ADVICE. Before I begin, some background information: I am a first class graduate from a top UK University with a Masters in English Literature, I worked with NOVA for 7 months before moving on to a job in a Private International High School.
THE FACTS
NOVA, for many people, is a gateway to Japan. They are good at getting you set-up, especially in terms of your apartment. They also sponsor you: however, this is less important than NOVA would have you believe since graduates can sponsor themselves (so long as their salary is high enough). Because getting a private apartment in Japan is really quite tough, the NOVA apartment is really quite helpful for most people. Now I had a really difficult time getting my own apartment and I had a Japanese girlfriend to help me!
(In case your interested I recommend “LEOPALACE” since they have apartments
everywhere and, so long as you stay with LEOPALACE apartments, you only pay a
large deposit once. With Leopalace you can move around Japan with great ease and
you don’t need a guarantor).
Anyway, for many people this “set-up” support with apartments does seem a great help and it is. However, you should also be aware of some facts:
1.The apartment is shared and because NOVA has a very high turnover of staff your roommates WILL change over the year and so just pray you that you end up with nice roommates. Roommates are usually same-sex.
2.NOVA over charge you for their apartments. NOVA will try and justify this saying that the apartment is furnished and you don’t need to pay key money. But on balance this excuse is really quite dishonest to anyone who understands the renting market in Japan. NOVA over charges because it knows it can get away with it, pure and simple. Often private apartments come fully furnished these days, and even when they don’t you can buy recycled furniture real cheap. My Leopalace apartment came furnished, I didn’t pay key money and yet they do not “over charge” me like NOVA did. NOVA will also argue that you don’t pay gas, water and electricity bills: but again, these bills are so low in private apartments that this argument simply doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. So here is the reality: my NOVA apartment was shared with two others, we paid 69,000 yen each so that’s 207,000 per month. Now my Japanese neighbors lived in an identical apartment next door (not NOVA owned) and the actual going rate was 120,000 per month. So NOVA overcharged by 87,000 yen per month. There is no other credible conclusion: this was exploitation and there is no denying it.
3.NOVA charge you rent in arrears. This is a great help when you first arrive in Japan but be very careful: it makes it financially difficult to leave your NOVA apartment. To resign from NOVA means eviction. So to leave a NOVA apartment is crazy expensive because you pay in arrears and MUST give 30 days notice. Now effectively this means you will likely pay 2 months rent AFTER leaving the NOVA apartment. This is because no private landlord in Japan will keep a property on ice for 30 days. So the NOVA apartment, whatever your opinions, does has the function of trapping you in the company and provides a prohibitively expensive disincentive against leaving the company for better jobs. Whether this is by design or accident is up to your own reasoning, I happen to believe the former.
So apartments are a blessing and a curse. I met many teachers who hated NOVA and had other job offers but they couldn’t act on them because they lacked the money to leave NOVA. So if your coming to Japan through NOVA I strongly recommend you bring savings of around 300,000 yen (and DON’T blow it all in the bars, save it you crazy fool) so that you at least have the option of leaving NOVA if you don’t like them.
Next lets look at the salary, again we shall discuss only the facts:
You are on probation pay for 2 FISCAL months. That means, for example, if I start work on Sep 4 then I wont get full pay for another 3 months. So you will be on probation pay until December. Now if you took the NOVA loan of 120,000 you will also have 40,000 yen cut from your salary on Oct, Nov, Dec. Whatever way you look at this, your salary is LOW (for Japan) for the first 2-3 months. Don’t fool yourself with make believe budgets based on keeping out of bars and eating in 100 yen shops: IT DOESN’T WORK, especially considering NOVA’s working schedule, which I shall explain soon. Just don’t delude yourself: you will be financially poor for those initial months. Too many people like to delude themselves with get-rich fantasies concerning teaching in Japan, and to some extent companies like NOVA are guilty of encouraging such a myth. You don’t get rich teaching in Japan, and those that command the impressive salaries have usually been working here for around 7-10 years. Now when you come off probation things certainly improve, I was earning 289,000 yen per month. Sounds great right? Maybe you’ll change your mind when we look at the actual working schedule.
Ok, NOVA’s work schedule. You WILL work Saturdays and Sundays and you will work a mixture of morning, mid and late shifts. My post-probation salary was 289,000 because I was in the Kanto region, had a 5,000 yen qualification allowance and I worked all late shifts. Many people only earn about 270,000 yen per month. So a late shift is 1.20 - 9.00 pm. And early shifts are not exactly early: you start work at 10am. You will also teach 8 lessons per day with one 40 or 45 minute lunch break. This means you teach SOLID every shift. This IS a sweatshop schedule compared to other teaching jobs, and MOST (if not all) conversation schools are sweatshops and THAT IS A FACT. Now there are some hidden costs here: more than likely you will buy lunch and dinner from nearby shops which is expensive, and more than likely you will buy coffee from nearby Starbucks etc. Unsociable hours (that’s what we call such shifts in the UK) always mean that you spend more money on eating out, and that’s a fact. Again don’t delude yourself with fantasies of “packed lunches” and flasks of coffee, because the schedule will keep you so god-damned busy and over-worked that the prospect of getting up early to make lunch etc (which also requires regular shopping but remember your hours, only the convenience stores and bars are open after 9pm) wont be so workable in reality. I HAPPEN TO KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT HERE BECAUSE I HAD TO SAVE AND BUDGET LIKE HELL SO THAT I COULD AFFORD TO LEAVE NOVA, I know what its like to prepare pack lunches every day, I know what its like to eat from 100 yen shops all the time, I know what its like to stay at home and watch tv while your room-mates and co-workers are having fun in the bars: it takes serious effort and Herculean levels of discipline that MOST PEOPLE cant handle. SO ACCEPT TH REALITY YOU CRAZY FOOL, THE NOVA SCHEDULE WILL BURDEN YOU WITH EXTRA COSTS IN TERMS OF EATING OUT AND IN TERMS OF BARS.
In addition, when you consider that your teaching 40 lessons per week you really do need to query whether your salary is as high as you think. This point is driven home even further when you consider that you get NO PUBLIC OR NATIONAL HOLIDAYS and that you get only 10 days vacation per year. Hence the popular joke: nova(cation).
To really let this sink in for the skeptics and the idiotic NOVA zealots and apologists a comparison may suffice:
1. In my high school job I get paid 300,000 yen with a 30,000 yen rent subsidy (so that’s 330,000 yen per month), now remember that NOVA OVERCHARGES for apartments;
2. I get ALL public and national holidays and unlike in the UK the Japanese have loads of such holidays;
3. I get 6 weeks paid vacation in summer, and 3 weeks paid vacation both at Christmas and Spring AND 10 days paid personal leave: all in all that’s almost 4 months of paid vacation per year;
4. I teach 3-4 lessons per day;
5. I get Saturday and Sunday off and I always finish work before 4.30 pm.
Do the math and you’ll can see that the NOVA salary is, comparatively, rather pathetic. Now that is a fact. DO NOT LET NOVA LIE TO YOU ABOUT THIS, they will try and tell you, for example, that 10 days vacation a year is “normal” in Japan. This is a shameful lie, I know what I’m talking about here because my girlfriend (and her family) and all my friends here are Japanese: they all get more than 10 days per year and they, at the very least, get all national and public holidays. So NOVA is telling lies and their dishonesty further weakens their “professional” credibility.
The next fact concerns your contract. NOVA likes to change your contract whenever it feels like it and you will only know about this when your AT pushes the altered contract into your hand (usually 5 minutes before your lesson) and tells you to sign. NOVA changed my contract twice within 4 months. Each contract change represented either a worsening of conditions or enforcement of conditions from outside (Japanese labor law) which NOVA had been forced to recognize. In both cases this is a bad sign, and that’s a fact. NOVA has been fiddling with their contracts since they began, and the pattern has always been towards weakening the working conditions for teachers, making you work even harder for less money.
Another fact concerning your contract is the infamous “non-socialisation” policy. This means you are prohibited from any contact with students outside the school. Now this effectively means that NOVA is extending contractual obligations into your private life, they are telling you who you can and cannot socialize with outside work. Now, whatever your opinion, this policy is in fact completely unconstitutional and effectively means that NOVA keeps close tabs on your personal life. THIS IS A FACT. I was pulled up on three separate occasions and interrogated by an AT on my personal life. The first time:
A. I had simply been seen with a Japanese girl within 2 weeks of being in Japan and was asked whether she was a student. How ridiculous is that I ask you;
B. second time I was accused of being at a student-teacher party which I had never attended, I was only believed when the teachers who were at the Party vouched for my innocence; and:
C. thirdly, an AT from a different school informed on me that I was seen with a student from his school (NOT MY SCHOOL) outside a train station. You have to ask yourself what kind of “personality” likes to snoop on others and let their fervent and perverted little imaginations concoct all sorts of scenarios with which to inform the bosses. This little spineless snipe is more cockroach than human and didn’t even know me: so the fact that I’m seen chatting with one of his students outside a train station is enough evidence with which to inform the authorities that I am “dating” a student, the words “witchhunt”, “hysteria” and “Mcarthyism” spring to mind.
So the socialization policy is not just something on paper (as some apologists misleadingly claim), it is acted upon. The effect of this policy (and this is a FACT) is to create a diffuse totalitarianism were gossip and fear and muted secrecy envelop the office. You never know when the spies are watching, and they love to inform on you because company loyalty is the royal road to promotion in NOVA. Now I complained openly about this policy when I was at NOVA. I was told it was “designed to protect teachers from stalker students”!!! This is a ridiculous explanation that only an AAM zealot, well versed in NOVA “double-think”, would believe. THE FACT IS THIS:
1. NOVA charge students for “voice” lessons. These are valuable student opportunities for less structured “chatting” sessions with a teacher in a less formal setting. If you make friends with students outside NOVA they get VOICE for free and NOVA gets undercut by that old-fashioned (and non-profitable) practice called friendship and good-will. NOVA want to make profit from VOICE: socialization with students threaten that profit. The non-socialization policy completely contravenes fundamental human rights concerning privacy, public/private boundaries and freedom of association. NOVA obviously regards their “right” to make profit as a higher value than human rights. It’s a simple as that.
2.There are indeed some “playboy” elements within NOVA, and thus NOVA wishes to avoid potential “embarrassments” by creating a blanket ban on ALL student-teacher relationships no matter how innocent or innocuous. It’s a bit like banning football because of football hooligans, or banning democracy because some people vote fascist. This is another explanation that was probably a second-thought after the profit motive.
Whatever your thoughts, the non-socialization policy will most definitely interfere with your personal life and give great powers of suspicion, accusation and interrogation to your “company loyal” ATs, HTs and AAMs. That’s a fact, so a message to NOVA apologists: STOP LYING ABOUT YOUR SOCIALISATION POLICY, IT IS A BAD POLICY WITH NO MORAL JUSTIFICATIONS WHATSOVER. THIS POLICY IS ALL ABOUT PROFIT SO PLEASE STOP MISLEADING PEOPLE ABOUT THIS.
MY OPINIONS
Now here is what I think. NOVA is a good job BUT ONLY for a specific type of personality and degree holder. If you belong to that “type” then NOVA is for you: if you don’t belong to that type then NOVA will violate, exploit and burn you out on a daily basis. Let me explain the four “types” of folks that work at NOVA.
1. THE ZEALOTS: these are people who want promotion and they will walk all over their own principles and other people to get their way. They are not professional or intelligent, they are more like human cockroaches and NO-ONE trusts these people and for good reasons. Even the so-called “nice” ones will turn on you because they must obey company rules. So that that friendly guy you thought you could trust, when he gets promoted watch him change into Adolf Hitler and use all his info on you to climb the greasy pole. NOVA does NOT promote on professionalism or teaching ability: they promote on company loyalty. They want enforcers and not educationalists. Enforcers make sure you OBEY while educationalists are a liability who often “question” things too much.. So I have ZERO RESPECT for Ats, HTs and AAMs. Especially AAMs who are the most despicable class of human I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my entire life.
2. THE LOSERS: these are people with “Mickey mouse” degrees from disreputable universities and zero-job prospects back home. They make up the “majority” of NOVA teachers. Maybe they’re alcoholics (in denial); maybe they burnt too many bridges back home; maybe they’re ex-US army with no degree but VISA status. Whatever their particular “problem”, they ARE NOT interested in teaching. They are here to drink in bars and behave irresponsibly for their entire duration in Japan. They are here because no one else back home will hire their sorry asses for a comparative salary as they get over here. The NOVA schedule actually suits them: you teach the same lessons over and over again, so they don’t have to think (a great relief for them); and they are usually too stinking of liquor and wasted in the morning to work at 8.30 am, so the late shifts are great. Sometimes a loser develops ambition, and they become the most horrible of zealots, see number 1 above. The losers are, in a word, complete idiots (even the nice ones).
3. THE PRISONERS: Maybe they don’t have qualifications to get a better teaching job because that 2.2 in civil engineering just wont cut it with the high schools. Maybe they will leave Japan in 9 months (after 13 months of being here) and the prohibitive costs of leaving NOVA apartments means that a new job is not an option. Maybe they have become resigned to their fate and just exist like melancholic shamblers doing their “time” like a lost soul in purgatory. These are the infamous complainers, those who moan but cannot, or will not, do anything to escape NOVA. I feel sorry for them because they are trapped, but I do get sick (like everyone else) of people who complain in whispers (they never speak up against the AAMs etc) and make zero effort to change their circumstances.
4. THE MOVERS: Those that are teachers, who came to Japan to teach and thus realize very quickly what a complete joke NOVA is and are planning to get out ASAP. Maybe they have too much self-esteem and realize that this job will drag them down in the long run. Maybe they like higher salaries and longer vacations and a more challenging job and are appalled by what they find at NOVA. Maybe they are sick of being patronized and bullied by NOVA ATs, HTs and AAM zealots who are a whole lot less qualified, professional and educated than those they are criticizing. Maybe they dislike a company that thinks it has the right to pry and interfere with their employee’s personal lives. Either way, the movers don’t get mad like the prisoners, they move on to better things while retaining their right to criticize NOVA and warn others of the realities of such a school. The movers are the cool folks at NOVA but by their very nature will be gone within 6-7 months of NOVA. I met very few of these people at NOVA and all of them (including myself) subsequently left NOVA for better jobs.
MY RECOMMENDATION. Come to Japan through JET, get into the high schools and AVOID all conversation schools. When I see a conversation school teacher (maybe I am being a snob) I think “loser” “zealot” or “prisoner”, they are more akin to a McDonald’s worker than to a “real” teacher in the teaching profession. I have no respect for such people and its not just me, the whole teaching community in Japan (and indeed many Japanese people who speak good English) have a low opinion of such people. This is not just snobbery, it is because when gaijin give the foreign community a bad name (for behaving like complete idiots in public places) it is usually conversation school teachers who are the culprits. The good teachers in this country are eager to make a good impression on the Japanese people but many conversation teachers don’t give damn about Japanese culture and are on a “scorched earth” policy before they go home after a year.
But it’s not only about professionalism. It’s about salaries, working conditions, vacations etc etc. The facts speak for themselves: Conversation schools offer the worst conditions in every criteria and the high schools offer the best. Only an idiot say “yes” to 8 lessons per day, unsociable hours, novacations, dull repetitive teaching programs, non-socialization policies, unprofessional managers etc etc. Only an idiot sits in a sewer (and adds to it) when they could be having a much more healthy, rewarding and challenging existence if they were to stop groveling and stand up for themselves. Hence I can say with doubt: NOVA are full of idiots, only idiots stay with NOVA: in fact I was an “idiot” for working at NOVA for 7 months when I should have come to Japan with JET. Im glad NOVA is behind me now, but I put up with so much crap for those 7 months and only an idiot ignores or dismisses the mountains of bad press that these schools get. So you’ve got to ask yourself one question: am I an idiot? Well are you, punk..
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